


Vanishing Acts

by Anonymous



Series: Within/Without [10]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: 3x08, M/M, past eddie/shannon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25130509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: For a brief moment in time, the possibility of a second chance for their family dangled before him, glimmering, in those six words: “I think I might be pregnant.”Eddie wished he’d never wanted then what he wanted now, twice as much.or:Eddie has made peace with Buck, and Christopher seems to be doing better. So why is he still going to fight club? (set during episode 3x08, “Malfunction”)
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Within/Without [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1738876
Comments: 34
Kudos: 223
Collections: Anonymous





	Vanishing Acts

It was pointless, arguing with a ghost, but Eddie went ahead and argued anyway. Argued his way up to the attic—cursing as he tripped over broken toys and forgotten junk—and argued his way back down, cardboard box balanced painfully against his hip, which had been badly bruised in his last fight.

The sun was coming up, and Christopher was at Abuela’s. Hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline after a twelve-hour night shift, Eddie argued with her ghost.

“You always kept a messy house,” he told her, as he set the box down on the living room floor and sat cross-legged beside it. “Drove me fuckin’ nuts, to tell you the truth. We learned to keep shit neat in the Army.” He used his knife to cut through the tape across the top. After she died, he couldn’t deal with emptying out her apartment, so he’d coughed up a chunk of change and paid movers to do it, and Buck, god bless him, had supervised the boxing up of everything that couldn’t be sold or given away.

This was the last box. He’d been through all the others. He’d kept a few things, photographs, old drawings of Christopher’s, but mostly it was shredding bank statements and throwing out odds and ends Buck hadn’t felt confident enough to dispose of himself. 

— _You let Buck go through my things?_ Shannon demanded. She was sitting on the couch, wearing that dress Eddie liked so much, the yellow one, with the straps and the buttons down the front. — _You had no right to do that, Eddie._

“What do you care?” Eddie said defensively. “You’re dead.”

— _I just don’t like the idea of that man pawing through my underwear. It’s a total invasion of my privacy._

“What privacy? Dead people don’t have privacy. And Buck isn’t some creep off the street, Shan. He’s my best friend. He was—and is—an enormous help to me and Chris.”

— _He certainly is an enormous something_ , Shannon retorted, flicking her hair over her shoulder. — _You were awfully quick to let him back into our family after that lawsuit._

“We’ve moved past it,” Eddie said tersely.

— _Oh, have you?_

“Yes,” he insisted. “Mistakes—mistakes were made. On all sides. But we talked it out. No hard feelings.” It had been two weeks. Two weeks since Buck had apologized and Eddie had forgiven him. Buck had joyfully re-devoted himself to Christopher, and they were hanging out again. Everything was fine. Eddie dumped a folder of medical records onto the carpet. “Why did you keep all this crap?”

— _Have you really forgiven him, Eddie?_

“Why did you keep all this crap?” he repeated. “It’s online now, digitized.”

Shannon sighed. — _I like a paper trail._

He held a faded x-ray up to the light. “Fractured scaphoid—wait, is this from when you broke your wrist? In high school? Damn, you really did save everything.”

— _You should be glad that I did. After Christopher was diagnosed, I kept every piece of paper those doctors gave us. They would have overcharged us for his second surgery if I hadn’t had all the records right there._

“Buck installed some sort of app on my phone, it organizes all of Chris’s data and tells me when he’s due for an appointment. Pretty neat, huh? Buck’s good at finding stuff like that.”

— _Does Buck know about all the fighting you’ve been doing?_ Shannon inquired.

Eddie flushed. “I’m done with that. I just needed to blow off a little steam, but I’m cool now.”

— _Is that so, Mr. Broody? You’re cool now? Because Buck is your BFF again?_

“Would you stop making everything about Buck.” 

— _You want me to stop—. That’s funny, Eddie. Let me see your back._

“What?”

— _Let me see it._

Eddie pulled his shirt over his head and turned his back to her.

— _Oh, Eddie._

He knew his skin looked like ground-up hamburger meat—cut and scratched and bruised to hell from all the times he’d been slammed against the chain-link fence. He did his best to clean himself up after a fight, picking out dirt and gravel and dousing everything with hydrogen peroxide, but he had to be extra careful at work, make sure nobody saw him with his shirt off. He knew it was a liability, especially with Buck in his life again. Buck never missed a damn thing. He would go ballistic if he found out, so Eddie had resolved to call it quits. He’d gone out strong, anyway, winning three in a row. Un-fucking-beatable. But—no more fights.

Eddie put his shirt back on. “See? Not so bad. I’ve had plenty worse.” He returned to the box and lifted out another stack of folders. He couldn’t bring himself to really look at the stuff from Christopher’s early years, all the test results and prognoses. Shannon _had_ done her research: there was pamphlet after pamphlet on clinical studies, experimental treatments, even alternative medicines. It made him feel sick. He hadn’t been there. He’d been on the far side of the globe, extracting shrapnel, placing tourniquets, splinting limbs, and shooting his gun at people who didn’t want him in their country any more than he wanted to be there. And yet he was the one with the silver star, the one who got called a hero, while his family referred to Shannon as “esa gringa inútil.” _¿Qué esperabas?_ his father had asked. _Ella no sirve pa’ nada._

_What did you expect from that good-for-nothing gringa?_

Eddie began to sift through the next pile of papers. “I think you’d like me better now,” he remarked to Shannon. “I was still getting El Paso and the Army out of my system when you died. But the people here have changed me, you know? For real. Bobby and Buck especially. They’ve shown me there are more ways to be a man than all that macho bullshit I grew up with. And I’m sorry for how I acted. If we could do it over again—”

— _Maybe it would’ve been different,_ Shannon said. — _Maybe you would’ve been different, maybe I would’ve been different. Maybe we would’ve been completely different people._

“Yeah. Maybe.” He flipped through pages at random. A pink slip caught his eye.

_Planned Parenthood: Abortion Procedure After-Care._

“Sh-Shannon?” he said weakly. The paper had a date on it: one week before she died. “What is this?”

She didn’t say anything. He could still see her, sitting there on the couch, but she was a little blurry now, translucent around the edges.

“What the hell is this, Shannon?”

— _Eddie…_

“You—you said you weren’t pregnant,” he said hoarsely. Something was obstructing his windpipe and he could taste metal on his tongue. “You told me you were just… _late._ ”

— _I was about to ask you for a divorce, Eddie. I couldn’t have a baby with you._

“You lied to me? How could you do something like this without telling me, Shannon? We were still a family, you were still my wife—”

— _But we weren’t even really together!_ she exclaimed. _What do you want me to say, Eddie? You kept me at a distance, all those months—_

“I needed time!” he yelled. “I needed time to think, time to figure out if I could trust you again—”

— _You stopped loving me_ , Shannon cut in.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

— _You weren’t in love with me anymore. You just… stopped._

“I never stopped loving you, Shannon, why would you say something like that?” His cheeks were wet. He lurched to his feet, and before he realized what he was doing, he had slammed his fist into the wall. The plaster crumbled, leaving a sizable dent, and Eddie clutched his throbbing hand to his chest. “Why the fuck would you say that to me?”

— _Because it’s the truth. You stopped being in love with me, so I stopped, too._

“I never—”

— _You never wanted me to stop loving you,_ she agreed. — _But you… needed me to, I think._ Her blue eyes were wide and luminous, swimming with tears. — _We weren’t working, and if I had to pretend with you—… I couldn’t do that to Christopher. Having a second baby would be even crazier than having the first._

It felt like falling from the sky. The missile sliced through the tail of the helicopter; the Blackhawk spun lazily, almost drunkenly, gathering momentum as it plunged earthward and took a nosedive into the sand.

“So why didn’t you—with the first one?”

— _Why didn’t I…?_

“Why didn’t you get rid of the first one?” he growled. “Why didn’t you just get rid of Christopher, too, save yourself the trouble while you had the chance?”

— _Fuck you, Eddie._

“Fuck me? Well, fuck you too!” Eddie shouted. He nearly punched the wall again but restrained himself from doing further damage to the house. He needed to get back in the ring, he realized. Tonight. He could go to the junkyard tonight. The thought soothed him, made it easier to breathe. Fighting didn’t fix everything, but it sure as hell made him feel more in control, as the world tilted on its axis and the ground came up to meet him. _Incoming!_ Mills hollered in his ear. _Brace yourselves, boyos, we’re going down! We’re going down!_

“So why didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

— _I was terrified,_ Shannon said. — _And it was Texas. We were so young. You asked me to marry you, and I… I wanted to be a family with you._

“I wanted to be a family, too.” He swiped angrily at his eyes, his cheeks. “Can’t believe I lost you for good this time, Shan. I always thought, if we could do it over—"

She actually laughed then, a strange tinkly sound like shattered glass. — _But if I had my time again, we both know what I’d do._

Eddie sank to the floor, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the wall.

Of course he’d loved her. He’d survived Afghanistan for her, hadn’t he? He’d fought to come home to her, to Christopher, time and again. What greater show of love was there, than fighting to come home to someone? But somehow, despite the strength of their love, she’d lost all her faith. She’d left him, she left him in their fucking bed, wearing nothing but the marks from her teeth, and all she took with her was a small carry-on suitcase.

The first time.

The second time she left, she didn’t take anything with her at all.

Just regret, maybe.

Eddie didn’t believe in god, not unless he needed someone to rail against, but sometimes he wondered if there was such a thing as fate. Had he been destined to lose Shannon all along? Whether he’d managed to screw up every step or played a perfect game—maybe none of it mattered, if they weren’t meant to be.  
  
 _You stopped loving me._

He hadn’t. He wouldn’t.   
  
_You stopped being in love with me_.

…Wait, what? 

Eddie opened his eyes and looked at the couch. It was empty, of course. No Shannon in her yellow dress. Shannon hadn’t said jack-shit to him, because Shannon had died last spring. Eddie was alone in his house punching walls and shouting at ghosts like a total loco.

But the paper crumpled in his fist was real enough. _Abortion Procedure After-Care._ There _had_ been another baby, or rather, the idea of one. A few cells glommed together, no larger than the head of a pin—Eddie knew it hadn’t amounted to anything more than that. But for a brief moment in time, the possibility of a second chance for their family dangled before him, glimmering, in those six words: _I think I might be pregnant._

Eddie wished he’d never wanted then what he wanted now, twice as much.

His phone rang. He answered on autopilot. “Yeah?”

“Eddie?” It was Buck.

“Hey, man.”

“Are you okay? You sound kinda funny.”

How Buck managed to deduce that from three monosyllables, Eddie could not fathom. “Not feeling too good,” he said honestly.

“What’s going on? Is it your stomach? I thought you looked a little off when we left work this morning.”

“Might’ve overdone the caffeine.”

“Well, listen, I’m in the area—I could swing by your place with some food? Might help you feel better.”

Eddie would have preferred to sit this day out, alone, waiting for the sun to set so he could go to the ring and settle his debts in the darkness. But his friendship with Buck stood on such shaky legs right now. If he turned Buck down, Buck would think Eddie was still angry with him. He could already picture the injured expression that would bring to Buck’s face—

“Fine,” he said.

“Great!” The relief in Buck’s voice was palpable. “I won’t overstay my welcome, I promise—we’re both tired, it was a long night, you’ll probably wanna crash soon—”

“You can sleep here, I don’t care,” he said. And winced. In the before-times—pre-lawsuit—Buck had crashed at his place all the time, usually on the couch but occasionally in his bed, which was a thing that had happened once or twice after the tsunami.

“You sure?” Buck sounded hesitant now.

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Buck wouldn’t stay past late afternoon; Eddie could have a couple hours to himself before it was time to go to the junkyard. He glanced up at the ugly dent in the wall. “I was moving furniture around the other day and knocked a hole in my wall. Think you could help me spackle it over after we eat?”

“Glad to,” Buck replied cheerily. “See you in a few, Eds.”

*

A few weeks later the jig was up, and he broke down in front of Bobby.

“I’m still mad. How stupid is that? I’m angry at dead person. And at myself. Because I forgave her for everything, and it wasn’t enough. _I_ wasn’t enough.”

Bobby didn’t suspend him or even write him up, but he did saddle him with two months of mandatory talk therapy. Then Bobby sent him home for the day.

Buck intercepted him on his way out. He had eyes like the Fourth of July—red, white, and blue. He’d been crying too.

“You heard?” Eddie said dully. He couldn’t even bring himself to care that Buck had eavesdropped on a private conversation. It saved him the trouble of another confession.

“I was having dinner with Bobby when Captain Cooper called last night,” Buck said.

“Oh.”

“Eddie—”

“I can’t do this right now, man.”

“You don’t have to do anything. I’m driving you home.”

“I can—”

“Just shut up and let me drive you, Eddie.”

He didn’t have the energy to argue, but:

“I don’t wanna go home,” he said.

Buck drove them to the beach instead. He parked in one of those tiny lots just off the shoulder of the PCH, and they scrambled down the side of the bluff. It was barely nine in the morning, so the beach was quiet, just a few surfers out on the water. Buck had brought a towel and he spread it out on the sand for them to sit.

They watched the waves in silence.

The sun was higher in the sky now. Even though he still felt cold and frozen inside, Eddie tilted his head back and let the sun warm his skin. He glanced at Buck from the corner of his eye. “You should be wearing sunscreen,” he said.

“I am, don’t worry.”

Eddie watched his best friend.

Buck had taken off his shoes and socks and rolled up his jeans. His feet were buried in the sand, and his elbows rested on his knees as he gazed off into the horizon.

“You ever tried surfing?” Buck asked.

“Never.” 

“Me neither. Wouldn’t mind learning, though. One of my physical therapists was a pro, and he said that when you’re riding on the crest of a wave, you’re riding to the top of the world. I thought that sounded pretty good.”

“Huh.” Eddie scooped up and a handful of sand and watched it trickle through his fingers. After Christopher, Buck was the single most important person in his life. “Did you know?” he asked.

“No,” Buck said. “I mean, I saw the bruises. And I wondered if something was going on. But I’d just gotten you back, Eds, I dunno, I figured things between us might be weird for a whi—”

“I don’t mean the fighting,” Eddie interrupted. “I mean, did you know about…” He waited for Buck to finish his sentence, but Buck just looked at him, brow furrowed. Buck possessed the uncanny ability to anticipate most of Eddie’s thoughts; on those rare occasions when he didn’t, Eddie had to admonish himself that Buck couldn’t actually read his mind. “…Shannon,” he said reluctantly.

“The divorce?”

Buck was the only person who knew about that, until today with Bobby. 

Eddie shook his head. “You boxed up her shit for me,” he said roughly. “After she died. Did you know, all this time?”  
  
“Know what?”

“Maybe you didn’t wanna tell me, and I get that, okay? You probably thought I’d—”

“Eddie, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Buck said.

“The baby, Buck. The fuckin’… abortion.”

Buck stared at him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. So he hadn’t known, then. Of course Buck hadn’t snooped through Shannon’s private papers. He’d just boxed everything up, like the good friend that he was, and left the boxes neatly stacked in Eddie’s attic. Of course, of course he hadn’t known.

Wishing he’d kept his fat mouth shut, Eddie watched Buck puzzle it and put the pieces together in his brain; he saw the moment when it clicked for him. Buck laid a hand on his arm. “But you told me—I thought—didn’t Shannon tell you that she’d gotten her dates wrong, that she was just late for her period or something?”

“Yeah, but she wasn’t late, Buck. She _was_ pregnant, and she…” His eyes filled with tears again. “I found the form from Planned Parenthood in her stuff, that day you came over with breakfast, remember, we—”

“Is that why you punched a hole in your wall?” Buck asked.

“How—?”

“C’mon, Eddie, I’m not stupid. You don’t get a dent like that _moving furniture_.” Buck’s hand tightened on his arm. “So she—”

“A week before she died. She got rid of it.”

“Shit.”

“There could’ve been another baby, but—. When she asked me for the divorce, she’d already gotten rid of it.”

“Stop saying ‘got rid of it,’” Buck shook him gently. “She had an abortion, Eddie, she didn’t commit infanticide.”

“I know that!” he snapped. “I’m not—I know it was her choice to make _._ But she shouldn’t have lied to me.”

“No,” Buck agreed.

“I just—fuck. That baby could have saved us, you know?” 

Buck made a noncommittal noise.

“What?” Eddie said. 

“Nothing, man. Nothing. Just thinking.” Buck let go of his arm.

“C’mon, say it.”

“I’m not a parent. I’ve never been married. I don’t know.”

“Well, what’s your _opinion_?” Eddie sank his hands into the sand before they could bunch into fists.

“Opinion’s cheap,” Buck said. “Only pizza’s cheaper.”

“Huh?”

“You want my two cents, Eddie? Fine. My opinion is that you and Shannon already made the best kid in the whole wide world. Even if you went to a lab and, like, genetically engineered the perfect human genome, you couldn’t make a better kid than Christopher. So, I’m sorry, but if Shannon didn’t want to stay married to you, a new baby wouldn’t have done a damn thing to change that.”

Eddie closed his eyes, but a few tears seeped out anyway. Then a choked sob.

God damn it all to hell.

He’d cried in Buck’s arms once before, shortly after she died. And now he was doing it again. Crying into Buck’s _neck_ , to be precise—his face was buried in skin, not shirt—and he felt completely unmanned by it. Buck held him tightly. He was sort of rocking him. Or maybe it was just the force of his own wet, ragged breathing, rattling through them both.

“I stopped being in love with her,” he said, once it had passed.

“That’s okay,” Buck said.

“No, I mean… I think I already had. Stopped being in love with her. Before she died. But I still _loved_ her, and I thought we should be a family.” Eddie wiped his eyes with the hem of his shirt. “She was a good person, and she was brave. But ever since I found that piece of paper, I—I…”

“…you’ve been having trouble remembering her that way,” Buck finished for him. 

“Yeah,” he agreed heavily. “And I can’t stop thinking about that baby—zygote, embryo, whatever—just… vanishing. Into thin air. What I’m feeling—I don’t know if it’s relief or regret. And Shannon…”

“She vanished, too.”

“Yeah. She did. I’m so mad at a dead person that I’m punching holes in walls.”

“…and people,” Buck said, elbowing him.

“Not today, man.” Eddie dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “Please. You can yell at me later.”

“I’m not gonna yell at you. But we _are_ gonna talk about this. Eventually.”

“Do we have to? Bobby’s already making me go to therapy.”

“Therapy’s not so bad.”

“Maybe not for you. Where I come from, therapy’s for rich white ladies.”

“Dude, it’s free.”

“Shit’s still for bored white people.”

“You’ve had a bad day, Edmundo,” Buck said, “so I’m not gonna tell you to get over yourself. But get over yourself.”

He laughed out loud. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Get over yourself, man.” Buck wore an infuriating little smirk.

“Get over myself. Un-fuckin’-real.” Shaking his head, Eddie finally unlaced his boots and kicked them off along with his socks. Then he used Buck’s shoulder to lever himself upright and wandered down to the water.

He closed his eyes, feeling the waves lap at his feet.

“Roll up your pants, at least.” Buck had followed him into the shallows.

He shrugged, petulantly.

“You’re as bad as Christopher.” To Eddie’s astonishment, Buck crouched down by his feet and started rolling up his jeans for him. He was getting his own jeans wet in the process, as he carefully cuffed each pant leg three times. It was familiar and presumptuous, and Eddie found he didn’t mind a bit. He looked down at Buck fondly and rested a hand on the top of his head.

“Hey,” he said.

Buck looked up at him, squinting against the sunlight. “Yeah?”

“I’m glad you’re here.”

**Author's Note:**

> Don't hate me (or Shannon!) for this! This was honestly where I thought the "pregnancy" storyline in 2x17 was going at first, and evidently a year+ later, the idea is still in my head. (But I'm glad it didn't actually happen on the show, because then Shannon's death would have felt even more like a punishment for her "crimes.") Anyway, y'all know how much Shannon fascinates me, so forgive this detour into a slightly darker version of events. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3


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